DOCUMENT RESUMS

ED 332 319 EA 022 944

AUTHOR Larsen, GregTITLE Taming the Beast: Developing a Master Schedule for

Multi-Track Secondary YRE.PUB DATE Feb 91NOTE 12p.PUB TYPE Guides - Non-Classroom Use (055) -- Reports - General

(140)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS Class Organization; Educational Environme.it;

Educational Planning; Grade 8; Grade 9; *Grouping(Instructional Purposes); Junior High Schools; MiddleSchools; Multigraded Classes; School Organization;*School Schedules; Semester System; Track System(Educaticr); *Year Round Schools

IDENTIFIERS *Utah

ABSTRACT

Scheduling concerns such as how to keep instructorsteaching in the areas for which they are qualified and how to allowfor elective offerings in a student's schedule led North Cache MiddleSchool, a year-round education school serving grades 9 and 9 inRichmond, Utah, to explore a number of solutions. Seven solutions areexamined along with difficulties encountered with each: (1) tracking;(2) semester registration; (3) rainbow classes; (4) cross gradescheduling; (5) cross track scheduling; (6) single semesterscheduling; and (7) using new technology. A final section reviewsstaffing concerns. (CLA)

************************************************************************ Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made ** from the original document. *

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TAMING THE BEAST: DEVELOPING A MASTER

SCHEDULE FOR MULTITRACK SECONDARY YRE

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

GREG LARSEN, ASSISTANT PRINCIPALNORTH CACHE MIDDLE SCHOOL

571 SOUTH 200 WESTRICHMOND, UTAH 84333

(801) 258-2452

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"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THISMATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)."

THE PROBLEM

North Cache Middle School is a grade 8-9 middle school. It

is unusual to s;le schools with student populations as mature as

ours designated as middle schools. North Cache is better

understood as a junior high for purposes of snheduling. Our

ninth graders earn high school credit and participate in a wide

variety of high school activities. It wasn't possible for us to

use the technique employed by most year-round middle schools.

Namely, abandoning elective offerings in favor of exploratory

offerings. We had to find a way to preserve, and even expand,

those elective classes.

Secondary schools present particular problems when

implementing year-round education. Problem #1: How do we keep

teachers teaching in those areas in which they are qualified to

teach? Problem #2: How do we allow for elective offerings in a

student's schedule? Both of these problams result when a school

is broken into tracks. Where we once had five sections of an

offering in a traditional school, we now have one section on each

track, that is, one section available to any one student.

Typically, we have taken a very large, overcrowded school and

broken it into several smaller schools. Small schools have

always struggled with the problems of allowing teacher

specialization and offering a rich and varied curriculum. Large

schools have never had to deal with these problems before. This

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paper will offer some solutions to these problems. Not all

of these solutions are currently in use at North Cache Middle

School, and not all of them will work in any particular location.

There are social, political, and practical forces that limit the

effectiveness of some of these recommendations.

SOLUTION NUMBER ONE: TRACKING

One of the obvious solutions to both of the above mentioned

problems is to simply place any class on a single track.

Students who needed or desired the class would be placed on that

track along with the teacher. Quite often this is the most

attractive option to the teacher of that class. In practice it

is actually the least attractive option. At North Cache we

placed the ninth grade band classes on D track only. We did this

for two reasons. First, it was observed that performance was a

very important part of this program. Second, the ninth grade

band students were to practice and perform with the high school

band. They needed a longer summer, hence the selection of D

track, which starts school later. It seemed like a reasonably

good solution at the time, but problems ensued. These were the

problems (in more or less chronological order):

1. Teachers of other classes were angry when theirclasses or extracurricular programs were notgiven the same treatment.

2. Parents of students in other programs, especiallyathletics, were angry when those programs didnot receive the same treatment.

3. It became difficult, and eventually impossible, tokeep the numbers of students registered in

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each track nearly equal.

4. Registration in elective classes was unequal acrossthe tracks. Band students couldn't sign up forother electives. D track had many electiveclasses that were just too small to teach.Rainbow classes became huge when D track was off.

5. Honors classes on D track were so large that theyhad to be split.

6. Classes had to be closed or opened from track totrack, depending on the number of studentsregistered.

7. Teachers became angry when their scheduleswere changed to accommodate those registrationproblems. Some teachers worked without apreparation period or had two preparationperiods, depending on which track was on.

8. Students became angry when they tried to transferout of a class after a semester and foundtheir options limited because classes that oncehad low registration had been closed out altogetheron their track.

Most people are aware of the sociological problems

inherent in placing any class or program on a single track. Few

would put Special Education, ESL programs, or Chapter I programs

on just a single track. Those who have tried to track gifted

programs have discovered the pitfalls there. Our experience

indicates that there are practical problmms as well as

philosophical ones that attend the idea of tracking. One more

thing, you can't track more than one class or program unless they

are mutually exclusive or both on the same track.

SOLUTION NUMBER TWO: SEMESTER REGISTRATION

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Anyone who has ever scheduled before knows that it is easier

to get students scheduled if they can be re-registered into year-

long courses at the semester. This becomes even more important

in YRE schools where more classes are going to be available just

one hour for any student. Scheduling year-long classes as two

semester classes allows semestet-long electives that are only

offered one class period to fit into a student's schedule.

Classes that are longer than a single class period are also

difficult to schedule.

SOLUTION NUMBER THREE: RAINBOW CLASSES

The single most effective mechanism for scheduling YRE

schools is the rainbow class. This is a class that has students

from all tracks in the same class. Assume that you have 120

students registered in any elective class in a four-track system.

You could create one class on each track with about thirty

students in each class. You could create three rainbow classes

with forty students in each one. Ten would be off track at any

one time leaving thirty to teach. You could create four rainbow

classes of thirty each. Seven or eight students would be off-

track at any time leaving twenty-two or twenty-three to teach.

The advantage to the rainbow offering is that there are now

three or four classes that are available for a student where

before there is just one class per track. That one class is

bound to conflict with something.

Certainly not all classes can be rainbowed. At least half

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of the time students in a rainbow class have not spent the same

amount of time in school and may not be together instructionally.

Math classes are particularly difficult to rainbow.

When looking for classes to rainbow, consider these:

1. Any class that is individualized.

2. Any class that relies upon group work.

3. Any class that can be taught in discreet units thesame length as the time a group spends off-track.

4. Any class in which learning is not sequential.

Integrated learning labs, cooperative learning, and reading

and writing workshops are a few of the techniques that have

worked well in our district and are particularly suited for

rainbow classes. Some teachers may have to change the way they

organize and teach some classes. Complete and worthwhile

inservice is a must.

Please note: It is a common misconception that students in

a four track system would be in four different places

instructionally in a rainbow class. This should not be true. In

any multi-track system the students in a rainbow class can be

divided into two groups: Those who have had their break this

term and those who haven't. Additionally, the whole class should

be together instructionally when the first and last tracks are

off.

SOLUTION NUMBER FOUR: CROSS-GRADE SCHEDULING

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Until the present time we have offered most of the courses

in our middle school to one grade or the other. We have only now

discovered that offering classes to both grades where possible

will allow more students to be scheduled into their first choice

of electives. We will no longer offer two sections of pre-

algebra to eighth graders and one section to ninth graders. We

will offer three sections of pre-algebra that are open to both

grades. This will help to eliminate some of the singletons that

we currently have in our schedule and allow us to schedule more

students without conflicts.

A two-year curriculum would work great for a school like

ours as far as scheduling is cencerned. We could schedule eighth

and ninth graders together into all of cur academic classes. One

year we could teach U.S. History and the next year geography.

But we have problems where high school graduation requirements

are concerned and movement in that direction is likely to be

slow.

SOLUTION NUMBER FIVE: CROSS-TRACK SCHEDULING

Any class that is available to a student in just one place

in the schedule is called a singleton. Singletons are the bane

of schedulers and students alike. We have seen how singletons

can be eliminated through scheduling rainbow and cross-grade

classes. Singletons can also be eliminated by scheduling cross-

track classes. Consider this teacher's schedule:

period Class

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1

2

3

4

5

6

7

A Track French

B Track French

C Track French

D Track French

Rainbow Art

Rainbow Ar':

Rainbow Art

Notice that with this schedule the teacher's preparation

period would depend upon which of the French classes is off-track

at any time. Each of the French classes is a skIgleton, and a

significant number of students will have a scheduling conflict

that involves that French class. To ease that problem, schedule

cross-track:

period Class

1 A and B Track French

2 C and D Track French

A and B Track French

4 C and D Track French

5 Preparation

6 Rainbow Art

7 Rainbow Art

This will cut the number of scheduling conflicts in half.

This is an especially good strategy to use with those classes

that are difficult to rainbow. We have scheduled our Honors

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a.

Biology classes this way. It has worked very well. The teacher

reports that those times when one track is off are good times to

schedule labs. He then repeats the labs when the other track

goes off. In this_scheme the class is never =part

instructionally as long as compatiPile traCks;have been chosen.

An additional advantage of both cross-track and rainbow

scheduling is that a class can be formed where registration was

insufficient for one on any particular single track.

SOLUTION NUMBER SIX: SINGLE SEMESTER SCHEDULING

Consider the following schedule where both speech and novels

and short stories are both semester classes and singletons:

Period 1st Semester

1 English 9A

2 English 9B

3 English 9C

4 English 9D

5 Rainbow Speech

Rainbow Novels & ss

?nd Semester

English 9A

English 9B

English 9C

English 9D

Rainbow Speech

Rainbow Novels & SS

Lots of conflicts can be anticipated with this schedule.

This is better:

Period 1st Semester 2nd Semester

1 English 9A English 9A

2 English 9B English 9B

3 English 9C English 9C

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4 English 9D English 9D

5 RBW Novels and SS RBW Speech

6 RBW Novels and SS RBW Speech

More students will be scheduled into their choice of

electives if the second schedule is used for that teacher.

SOLUTION NUMBER SEVELt NEN TECHNOLOGY

Prior to the adoption of YRE in Cache County School

District, our computer work was done by the state. We could get

two or three runs every year. This year we did our computer work

ourselves. We used SAS1 from Macro Educational Systems. This

way we could test each schedule with any number of computer runs.

Scheduling a year-round school is much more complex than a

traditional school. At very least it is like scheduling three to

five schools simultaneously. I couldn't imagine doing that if we

had to send the data out to be processed. I once ran eight

different master schedules in one day and still made a 2:00 p.m.

tee time. Doing the work on-site is expensive, but it does

afford the flexibility that makes scheduling possible.

STAFFING CONCERNS

Notice that all but one of these scheduling solutions have

one thing in common. They all assume that the teacher will be in

school as long as school is in session. This is a must in

secondary school YRE. At North Cache, most of our teachers have

extended contracts. The same results could be achieved with

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shorter contracts through job sharing.

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